Tools

Constellation

Melissa McGill's two-year public art installation lights up the collapsed trestles of Bannerman Castle for the first time on Pollepel Island. Seventeen tapered aluminum poles, each holding a single LED globe, rise above the ruins to heights ranging from 40 to 80 feet. "Constellation" is a trick of perspective; in the night sky, a 60-foot-high globe looks as distant as Alpha Centauri. This piece uses up-to-the-minute engineering—including solar panels and a computer program—yet points upward to the stars, which maintain the same technology eon after eon.